In the past, when reception of a program being viewed by use of a receiving device mounted in a vehicle became impossible because of a drop in the receiving level or for some other reason, it was necessary for the viewer to go to the trouble of searching through the broadcast stations one by one to find a receivable station and decide for himself or herself whether or not it was broadcasting the same program.
To eliminate the need for these troublesome procedures, the digital broadcast receiving device described in patent reference 1, for example, decides on the basis of the agreement of program identification information obtained from the broadcast signal whether or not another broadcast station is broadcasting the same program as the program currently being viewed, and when it becomes impossible to receive the program currently being viewed, automatically switches over to another broadcast station that is broadcasting the same program.